The spread of English since the late 16th century

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3. How do you understand Gramley's term General English (do we have similar term for Czech)? In which ways it is useful?

  • covers both StE and non-standard GenE X does not refer to traditional dialects or creoles
  • two poles - highly standardized variety used for published writing or formal discourse X colloquial type including a great deal of non-standard English
    • these non-standard items may be found across the ENL world and therefore they are similar enough to be easily comprehensible
      • e.g. third person singular present tense don't, the use of ain't or multiple negation
    • these two poles share most of their grammar, vocabulary and phonology
    • there is widespread agreement on the vocabulary and the central grammatical categories

-> the local, regional or national varieties are easily comprehensible and not likely to be misunderstood (e.g. despite different pronunciation)

  • for Czech we have similar term - Common Czech (obecná čeština)
    • an interdialect spoken in Bohemia and west Moravia

5. Characterize the spread of English in North America and Australia with regard to the dialectal and social status of the immigrants.

  • turbulent situation in 17th century England – suppression of religious dissenters → emigration
    • up to the Civil War: new middle class, better educated than average, familiar with the emerging standard
    • with the outbreak of the Civil War: poorer, less well educated people, uprooted from rural life, became part of the urban proletarian class = less affected by the written standard, but giving up their regional varieties in favour of the new spoken urban varieties (esp. London, to become GenE)
  • North America
    • early settlers were the better-educated separatists and Puritans that settled in New England, and the genteel classes that were to become planters of Virginia and the Carolinas
    • new waves of immigrants: from London, the Home Counties, the North of England, Scotland, Ulster = largely speakers of non-standard general English
  • Australia
    • officers in charge of the administration – closer to StE
    • transported prisoners – lower classes, non-standard English
  • the contact between the various dialects, the different environment, and different native languages English came into contact with caused changes to the language → new local standards developed and spread across the territory (North America, Australia, ...)

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